REGIS RACES IN DAY TWO OF NEISDA CHAMPIONSHIPS
The Regis College Men’s and Women’s Swimming & Diving teams continued having success in the pool on Saturday during the second day of New England Intercollegiate Swimming and Diving Association (NEISDA) Championships hosted by the University of Rhode Island.
SOUTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. - The Regis College Men's and Women's Swimming & Diving teams continued having success in the pool on Saturday during the second day of New England Intercollegiate Swimming and Diving Association (NEISDA) Championships hosted by the University of Rhode Island.
Three school records were broken during the meet while six times qualified for the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships that will be held at the end of the month.
On the men's side, the 800 freestyle relay squad of A.J. Graf (Newton, Mass.), Kiet Luong (Malden, Mass.), Nick Rainville (Reading, Mass.) and Cassidy Bastinelli (Newton, Mass.) smashed the previous school record by 10 seconds by finishing the event in 7:09.95 which qualified the quad for the ECAC Championships. The former mark was set last December at the Great Northeast Athletic Conference Championships. Graf's relay lead off time of 1:47.61 qualified him for the 200 yard freestyle in ECAC Championship. Three of the athletes of that relay team also had strong finishes in personal events. Cassidy Bastinelli and Nick Rainville also qualified for the ECAC Championships finishing the 200 freestyle relay with times of 1:47.90 and 1:47.85. Kiet Luong also set a new school record in the 50 yard butterfly finishing the race in 23.31.
For the Women, the 200 yard medley relay team of Jessica Higgins (Peabody, Mass.), Haley Bowen (Litchfield, N.H.), Ali Butcher (Natick, Mass.) and Shannan O'Neil (Lowell, Mass.) qualified for the ECAC Championships by finishing the relay in 1:54.62. Bowen also set a new school record and also qualified for the ECAC Championships in the 100 yard breaststroke with a time of 1:08.55. Higgins rounded out the exceptional day for the Pride by earning the last ECAC bid in the 100 yard backstroke when she finished the heat in 1:02.44.
"We had a much better prelims session today than yesterday, and they continued to even do better at finals", said Coach James Sweeney. "They really stepped up again tonight breaking more school records and having more ECAC qualifiers. The women continued there awesome relays by again qualifying for ECACs and both relays finished in the top eight which is a tremendous accomplishments. The men continued to produce many finalists and they again for the second time this season demolished the 800 free relay record by more than 10 seconds."
Due to the weather, tomorrow's preliminary session has been cancelled. The Pride will compete in the Finals which starts at 4:30 p.m.